I attended a writer’s conference last weekend and because of a workshop I attended, I decided to form a street team. I had thought about forming a street team before, but had been under the impression that street teams were aggressive marketing groups, mobilized by authors who acted more like military masterminds than writers. I have no problem with other authors incentivizing their street teams with swag and such, but that didn’t feel right for me.

But in this workshop, I learned that street teams can be more about fun and connecting readers with authors whose books they love, with only a tiny bit of (very optional) promoting, and that’s more like what I want to do.

So my street team is called The Body Checkers. I kind of liked the dual meaning of that name. Hockey players body check. For those of you not familiar with this term, basically, it’s when one player crashes into or uses his body to force another player off the puck. Members of my street team will likely be doing another sort of body check, in the form of ogling man candy of the hockey kind. This is Tyler Seguin of the Dallas Stars.

Although I have no objections to ogling non-hockey playing man candy.

So, there will be an issue of the newsletter coming soon that will give a lot more detail, so be on the lookout. If you’re not a subscriber, there’s a tab up top where you can sign up. Or, if you already know you want to be a Body Checker, you can go here.